Why Chinese American women gain weight

Ugh, I have to lose 16 pounds. Doctors’ orders. Otherwise, diabetes and achy knees will ruin my future. But here’s my other problem: Chinese American women gain weight for specific reasons. We have special issues in losing weight and eating healthy.

According to recent studies, genes and culture create problems in very specific ways. The issues apply to both Chinese immigrant women and American-Born Chinese — the ABCs. The findings spin a story that will sound familiar for a lot of other communities too.

This is serious. On the table are life-and-death choices. To get heavy or stay heavy brings a menu of physical ailments that can lead to depression. I’m not here with fat-shaming and guilting, which feeds eating disorders. The topic demands thoughtful, sensitive discussion. The goal is more support for us all.

Last year, the alarms went off in my life. My orthopedist told me that losing a few pounds would cure my aching knees; every extra pound I carry puts 25-30 pounds of extra pressure on my knees. My annual physical led to a similar warning. The doctor said I had to drop some weight or risk becoming pre-diabetic.

The news terrified me because diabetes runs on both sides of my family. My fat dad, who died of a heart attack, had a diabetic brother whose foot was amputated because of the disease. My diabetic mother withered to a bag of bedridden bones; a series of strokes left her unable to feed herself or walk.

So I started researching why Chinese American women gain weight. And I get it. Between my personal history and cultural history, I have a fuller understanding of the forces at work. In a few months, I’ll turn 60. With what I now know, I have a shot at breaking the yo-yo dieting cycles that plagued me since youth.

What follows is a summary of three useful studies that address why Chinese American women gain weight.

Chinese American women gain weight easily

First of all, genetics make Chinese American women prone to obesity. Actually, all Asians tend to get fat and diabetic at lower body mass indexes (BMI). Before your eyes glaze over, stick with me for an easy explanation. You can figure out your BMI by dividing your height into your weight. If this is too much math for you, just Google “BMI calculator” and plug in your numbers.

Usually, a BMI of 25 is the cut-off for tipping into obesity. But for Asians, 23 defines us as overweight and, 27.5 for obesity.

Okay. Now let’s continue to the meat of this topic: Chinese American women weight due to cultural identity issues. So chew on this question: Are you traditional Chinese, mainstream American or bicultural? The bottom line for our bottoms is that the more American we get, the fatter we are.

How Chinese American women gain weight

In a survey on obesity trends among Chinese American women, 25.5% of the ABC respondents were either overweight or obese, compared to 18.1% of the foreign-born.

The nutritionists found that the women’s relationship to food was directly shaped by how western they felt. Women in the survey fell into three categories:

• Traditionalists relied on familiar, healthy Chinese cooking routines such as steaming rather than frying.

• Bi-culturalists, who operate in both Eastern and Western settings, are highly influenced by the approval/disapproval of their significant others. Their ability to eat in healthy ways is directly related to how confident they feel about making independent decisions for themselves.

• ABCs, the most overweight and most Americanized, were also the most independent. They based food choices on personal attitudes and freedom of choice.

Other findings: Those who identified as more westernized were more likely to live in middle- to high-income neighborhoods. The longer an immigrant stayed in the U.S., the more weight she gained. Whatever their situation, everyone agreed that cooking at home and eating-in helped prevent excess pounds.

For this study, 300 Chinese American New Yorkers of both genders filled out a 146-question survey. Most respondents were female (65%), college educated, never married. They were 18 to 40, with a mean age of 26. They completed their surveys between 2008 and 2009.

Westernized immigrant women eat worse

Immigration plays a huge role in explaining why Chinese American women gain weight. Experts say most immigrants are at their healthiest when they first arrive. This is true even for the poor. Once they settle in, they sit more, snack more on empty-calorie junk food and grab more sweet treats.

But length of stay is only one critical factor in managing eating patterns. A Chinese immigrant woman’s comfort level with American culture greatly influences her food head, according to a 2014 study that tracked their dietary habits. The more American she gets, the more likely she is to eat crap.

From year to year in this study, researchers found that Chinese immigrant women gain consistently ate the same amounts of fish, pastries, tofu, fruits and veggies. Yet, the ones who acculturated with their new homeland completely changed their approach to food.

• They reached for bigger portions of beef, pork, bread and dairy (eggs, cheese, milk, butter, ice cream).
• They put fewer nutritious dark, leafy greens on their plates.
• Dry grains that need soaking, like rice, were also in less frequent rotation.

From Chinese foreign students to permanent residents, everyone’s more likely to dine on pizza, burger and sandwiches. Fats, sweets and grab-and-go convenience foods were on the rise, too. The result is increased risk for weight gain and chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, colon cancer and breast cancer.

For this study, researchers recruited 312 Chinese immigrant women in Philadelphia over a three-year period (2005-2008), then tracked them through 2010. The study, “Acculturation and Dietary Change Among Chinese Immigrant Women in the United States,” ran in the Journal of Immigrant Minority Health (2015, Volume 17). Authors of this report are: Marilyn Tseng of California Polytechnic State University’s Kinesiology Department; D.J. Wright of Westat; C.Y. Fang of Fox Chase Cancer Center’s Cancer Prevention and Control Prgram.

Lack of family support is an issue

Diabetes is a huge concern for everyone. It leads to heart disease (heart attacks, chest pains) and hypertension (high blood pressure, difficulty sleeping, sweating, nervousness). For men, high blood pressure can result in impotence.

All Asians groups of both genders are 60% to 70% more prone to the dreaded Type 2 diabetes than whites. The disease which killed my mother is now the fast-growing illness among older women of color. Even worse, diabetic women of color face twice as much risk as their diabetic male counterparts.

Studies find gender differences in dealing with diabetes:

• Women are more more depressed, anxious and have more physical symptoms than male diabetics.

• Women need people, especially group classes and support groups. They also turn to family members and friends, who don’t always step up. Men are different. For help, they’re more likely to search the Internet or lean heavily on their wives.

• Women struggle to prepare family meals and care for everyone. These responsibilities make it hard to eat right and self-care.

Confucian culture causes stress

Jumping off these general issues, diabetic Chinese immigrant women face a special level of misery. Studies call out Confucian values for treating women as second-class citizens, which can discourage them from making their health a priority.

A recent study of 146 San Francisco Chinatown residents, found that women juggled full-time work AND managing the household. They specifically mentioned feeling depressed as they juggled emotional burdens, poverty and their families.

Many felt a lack of support for their diabetic needs. As an example of why diabetic women of color might be in worse shape than their men, these Chinatown women admitted to struggling with food. Their families demanded “regular” cooking at mealtime. Their diabetic needs for bland, simple foods fell to the wayside.

But intervention by the study’s team brought change. With guidance and advice, the women showed improvement in managing stress, communication skills and their disease. As for the men participants, they left the project unchanged.

Researchers conducted a clinical trial with 145 mostly Cantonese-speaking participants from China and Hong Kong. They were 56% women and 73% married; 87% had a household income of less than $50,000.

What now?

If you click on the links within this post, you’ll find more details about each report. You’ll also find links to related studies, including research for other ethnic and racial groups.

And here are a few tips from Doreen Liou, author of the obesity study featured in this post. “Since peer influence tends to be strong in younger audiences, educators and health professionals need to promote easy and practical ways to prevent weight gain that are socially acceptable (e.g.: eating smaller portion sizes, limiting sugar sweetened beverages),” she told me via email. “Confidence to engage in healthy eating behaviors can be increased in small, achievable goals that are attainable for Chinese women.”

If you can relate in any way, share your story. I’m looking to start an on-going discussion. My thing is about why Chinese American women gain weight. But this topic is huge (pun intended) for everyone.

P.S. — I started 2016 at 5’2” and 141 lbs., with 16 pounds to lose. To help me with this ordeal, I joined Weight Watchers. You can read about my experience HERE.

Comments 19

Hi Betty… love your articles! The pictures with this one really hit home. I’m going through the same thing and already have lots of those things on your check list. I really appreciate your honesty and your willingness to share.
Cin
PS: I shared your article on my new work FB page

Excellent advice, Sandy. Thank you. And you’re so insightful — I stayed at 125 lbs. while I was dating. But the love handles showed up with the love. I walked a lot during my vacation in Europe last fall. It was wonderful and opened me up to walking. Walking’s new for me; as a city girl, I actually preferred taking taxis or riding the subway!

Oh my goodness, Cindy — thanks for the share! I really appreciate it. And thanks for making me feel better about posting those photos. While I was setting them up, I kept thinking, really? Am I really posting this pix of my fat self? How desperate can a blogger be for traffic? Haha.

Anyways, glad you feel validated too. The research did wonders for me. Thanks again! xo

Well as a healthcare professional – I appreciate your predicament. As a reader since you were with the Daily News I can offer only cursory advice – if I remember correctly your sister studies martial arts – have you considered Tai Chi rather than Tae. Kwon Do? It’s non combative and not that arduous. As for your knees – in keeping with your all natural philosophy might I suggest Glucosamine/Chondroitin which comes in a myriad of formulations as it REALLY is effective. I recommend Arthri-Sea or if you are allergic to shellfish- Joint Lube. However if you – like I have a problem with things that are too sweet – dump the bottle of Jointlube liquid into UNsweetened or sugar free apple juice. It takes about a month of taking it daily before you feel the improvement – it’s gradual and not dramatic – but it helps many of those I suggest it to

Darryl! Thanks for following my writing, all this time. Wow. I actually do take glucosamine/Chondroitin. I appreciate you explaining its benefits here, for people who might not know about it. And it’s been years since I’ve done Tai Chi — it was hard on my knees after awhile. But the orthopedist recommend a book called “Tai Chi Walking,.” There’s also a companion “Tai Chi Running.” I’ve read them both but done very little. So thanks for putting them back on my radar! And, good to hear from you. :)

Thank you so much Betty for sharing your insightful article with us. I am on the same boat. 15 lbs to go for me!!! I thought I had a good diet, but apparently not good enough.
I also highly recommend you do heart CT scan to check out the heart calcium score. My insurance does not cover the cost $80. The 5 minute image taken in the office shows me calcium deposit in the arteries around the heart.

Calcium deposits! I never even heard of this. But thanks for letting me know about it. Yes, support is a good thing. You can take it off too. I’m thinking of blogging about another angle on the food issue. Stay tuned for the upcoming weekend. Thanks for stopping by!

Thanks for including my study in your blog! With respect to level of education, a separate study that Dr Carolyn Fang and I published in 2012 (http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8480065&fileId=S1368980011001820) showed that the immigrant women in the sample who had at least some college education actually consumed a LESS moderate diet than women with less education – possibly (although we did not explore this in the study) because of higher purchasing power and access to a wider variety of foods.

I appreciate that you highlighted the issue of diabetes risk in Asian Americans in your blog. For a long time, Asians have been perceived as a ‘model minority’ even in this sense, with the view that the low prevalence of obesity in the Asian American population overall means we are somehow protected from diseases like diabetes. In actuality, Asians are at higher risk for diabetes than non-Hispanic whites. While weight gain plays a major role, it’s likely that there is something else going on besides weight gain that puts Asians at increased risk. In other analyses within this sample of Chinese immigrant women, Carolyn and I also found that psychosocial stress (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26346575) increased risk for insulin resistance, which is a marker for diabetes risk. The finding for stress is interesting because it suggests another pathway that might place Chinese Americans at higher risk for diabetes. It’s not clear how stress increases risk, but in our sample of women, stress was associated with poorer dietary choices (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21384248) and with markers of inflammation (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24846001), both of which are risk factors for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Carolyn and I are in the process of recruiting for and conducting a second study in Philadelphia to explore the stress-diabetes association in Chinese immigrants in greater depth.

As the daughter of Chinese immigrants myself, and a (former) New Yorker, I enjoyed the introduction to your blog and will be sure to check it out again more regularly!

Marilyn, thank you for the additional insights. This is really important stuff that is new to me. I look forward to the results of your next study. And thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us!

I’ve been lucky to be able to maintain a healthy weight but now that I’m in my mid-60s and have a family history of diabetes, I am much more careful about what I eat and drink. As you probably know already, juices and other sugary beverages should be avoided as much as possible. I’ve learned to love and even prefer water and lately I’ve been making delicious infused waters. A pitcher of water with sliced cucumbers or strawberries or lemon or mint, or some combination of those ingredients is a tasty way to encourage more water consumption. Alcohol is a no-no too so as much as I like a glass of wine with dinner I try to limit myself to 1-2 glasses per week.

Doralee, I’m off of juices and drink tons of water. And I haven’t had wine in ages because it’s just too many points — 5 points out of a daily allotment of 30 points on my Weight Watcher’s program!

But I never thought of infusion as a concept. What a great idea! I’ve had cucumber-infused water at restaurants and dropped the occasional slice of lemon into my glass. But you are talking about a lifestyle here. I’m gonna give it a shot. Thanks so much. :)

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About me

I’m a personal coach who specializes in life, work, diversity, communication and writing issues. I’m also a former journalist and currently a professor who teaches writing, public speaking and communication skills.

Most importantly, I’m the recovering daughter of my beloved, crazy control-freak Chinese immigrant parents. What I learned in transforming tough early experiences inspired me to create the Inner Child Institute™.

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